E3 2014: The Journey to the Center of the Universe in No Man's Sky

I don’t really know how to talk about No Man’s Sky, and neither does Hello Games’ Sean Murray.

When discussing what No Man’s Sky will be, Murray speaks about the sci-fi world, and what players do in it, in abstract terms, either because he’s afraid to spoil the wonder of discovery, or because the systems aren’t in place.

No Man’s Sky, if the hypothetical entity releases as planned, is everything I’ve wanted from video games since I was a child. It aims to fulfill my boyhood fascination with dinosaurs, discovery, exploration, strange places, space, and dogfighting.

In space, enemy freighters can warp into your region at any time, forcing you to fight or flee. Maybe you can outrun them. Maybe you need more money to afford a more combat-ready vessel. Maybe your weapons are enough to chew through a fleet.

On the ground, you’ll encounter pirates and other threats, scan natural resources and botany to earn money, and navigate potentially hostile environments. Over time, money earned can buy new ships that are better suited for speed or combat, and suits that allow you to enter less survivable spaces on desolate planets. Feasibly, you could spend your entire time with No Man's Sky scanning and uploading discovered creatures, flora, and fauna for cash -- but Murray describes this as the most boring way to play his game.

Murray is also explicit that the universe’s storytelling is implied, rather than authored. You can draw your own conclusions based on what you see, but why things are the way they are will never be explained.

The ambition of the tiny independent team rivals that of many multimillion dollar development efforts, but even after seeing Hello Games play for 30 minutes, very little of what’s to come is actually on display.

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We made a game with the most ambition that a small team could build.

What’s here, though, is enormously impressive, with a gorgeous aesthetic that seems believable despite its fantastical presentation. The procedurally generated worlds rely on an algorithmic programming system created by Murray. With the click of a button, Hello Games can generate dozens of different ships, creatures, and trees, and populate their worlds with fairly realistic consistency. As the player base proceeds toward the center of the universe, though, the familiarity of No Man's Sky starts depreciating -- what you'll find as you push forward starts feeling even more alien than the bright red worlds filled with dinosaurs already did.

These planets are each larger than most games' entire play spaces, and according to Hello’s goals, planets are infinitely discoverable. No Man’s Sky’s enormous world is also connected, so players can come together as they encounter new worlds. What happens when people find each other is as much a mystery as what they can do to those spaces.

“If you want to try and take an entire planet and make it a wasteland I think you're underestimating how big a planet is,” Murray told IGN. “If you think of planet Earth and walking around on the surface killing every living creature it's going to take you a long time, but maybe someone out there will try to do it.”

Multiplayer isn’t like other games, either. Murray wants to distribute players as far from each “We scatter them across the universe. It's the worst idea for an MMO. There are no lobbies or anything like that.” The idea, then, is that you’re playing alone in a connected world that gives off a sense of life — things are happening with or without you, your friends, and every other player in the universe, because the world exists as it is while you’re genuine lightyears away from one another.

“We had to develop the technology to make this game,” Murray said. Now the tech is in place for players to dive into a procedural world, filled with hundreds or thousands of unique places, items, animals, and more.

Murray and his team don’t seem afraid or overwhelmed. Hello Games doesn’t see No Man’s Sky as impossibly ambitious as it appears. Artist Grant Duncan summarizes it pretty succinctly, and says with confidence, “We made a game with the most ambition that a small team could build.”